U.S. President Barack Obama, who wants process to run its course in the review of Keystone XL, can’t be pleased with Friday’s Nebraska court decision that removes one of the last known obstacles to the project.

Despite finding ways to avoid giving Keystone XL a presidential permit by extending the approval process to an unprecedented six years and counting, process — at least as we know it — is coming to an end, and a While House decision should be due in the next couple of months.

Meanwhile, a parallel process is making fast headway in the Republican-controlled Congress to approve the 830,000 barrels of oil per day pipeline, which would link Canada’s oil sands and tight oil from the U.S. Bakken oil field to Gulf Coast refineries. The goal is to produce legislation with enough support to override a presidential veto. The House of Representatives voted to pass such legislation Friday, and the full Senate is expected to debate a Keystone XL bill next week.

But with the pattern of delay so well-established, the President so openly biased against it, opponents and proponents gearing up for yet another round of intense Washington fighting, the KXL plot remains hard to predict.

Will the process-minded President find a way to further prolong it to keep avoiding making a decision? Will he accept its results — which so far have been overwhelmingly in KXL’s favour — and approve it on its merits?

Will he block KXL to produce the sacrificial lamb the climate change lobby is looking for?

Process is President Obama’s last resort. With Keystone XL enjoying vast public support in the U.S., he’s lost the public relations battle. With voters voting against anti-Keystone XL candidates in the November mid-terms, he has lost the political battle.

Now process is slipping away, too.

The Nebraska Supreme Court ruling adds to many Keystone XL process wins — and is another big setback for KXL opponents who seized any roadblock to keep the pipeline from going ahead.

Bill McKibben, founder of the green lobby group 350.org one of the project’s top critics, explained why in a briefing with reporters last month on the Nebraska case: “No question, (KXL) remains at the heart of environmental agendas in this country, the issue that has brought more people into the streets, more people to jail, more people into activism in many, many years.”

Still, the seven-member court, Nebraska’s highest, upheld the approval of a revised pipeline route by former governor Dave Heineman. It was a decision based on default rather than views about the pipeline route. In short, only four judges felt the state lacked the authority to approve it, and a super majority of five was required to declare the approval unconstitutional and send the project back to the state’s regulator. Regardless, that hurdle was cleared and the lawsuit has reached the end of the line.

There were two other major wins in the past year: the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality (NDEQ) found that TransCanada Corp.’s proposed re-route avoids many sensitive ecological regions in the state and generally painted a positive picture of the proposal; and a supplemental environmental impact statement by the U.S. Department of State found the pipeline would not have major environmental effects.

Still, Russ Girling, the president and CEO of KXL proponent TransCanada Corp., conceded Friday it’s hard to predict next steps. He told reporters that “there is skepticism of potential further delay” and he welcomes “all opportunities to bring this to a positive decision as quickly as we can,” whether through Congress or through the State Department process.

If State proceeds as expected, it will resume its national interest determination, a final review that involves input from various agencies and that was put on hold on Good Friday last year pending the resolution of the Nebraska court challenge.

Mr. Girling said two-thirds of the 90-day review has been completed and he expects the remainder to last another 30 days. When a remaining administrative process is taken into account, “we would think that would be done in 30 to 60 days.”

With shippers continuing to support the pipeline, which has cost $2.4-billion so far, construction could then take two summers.

“At these oil prices … producers on both sides of the border are going to feel the pain, and the quicker we can move to a lower cost, more efficient transportation, the better off those producers on both sides of the border are going to be,” Mr. Girling said.

Six years are a long time for TransCanada and for Canada to wait for a ruling. The course is running out for KXL’s review and it’s time for reasonable people and for reasonable solutions to prevail.

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